


Trick or Treat, Here We Meet

by cyevi



Category: Dragon Ball
Genre: F/M, Horror, Lilbit o' Lovecraft, Three Year Gap (Dragon Ball), something weird, trick or treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-31
Updated: 2019-10-31
Packaged: 2021-01-15 03:58:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,687
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21247115
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cyevi/pseuds/cyevi
Summary: Bulma agrees to meet Vegeta at a cave on Halloween. A very odd cave.





	Trick or Treat, Here We Meet

The mouth of the cave seemed _incorrect_ to Bulma. She crossed her arms and stared at the meeting location for several moments from the comfort of her personal aircraft. It's not that she was in the wrong place, or that the entrance had been artificially carved, but it just didn't match with her well-traveled expectations of a natural formation. The edges were sharp curves that seemed to fold in onto one another. Simultaneously, the edges of the entrance warped her perception, as if she were looking through a camera on a dolly pulling back while the lens zoomed in.

She shut her eyes and shook her head.

“Okay, that's not possible. It's rock, and something in the rock is … probably hitting the moonlight at a weird angle and messing with my brain.” The heiress and now mother of a restless infant opened her eyes, passing one hand upwards along her cheek, pressing her fingers against her right eye.

“It's just a cave.” Before looking at the cave again, she flipped a few switches on the control panel to power down the craft. Then, deliberately, she leaned back in her seat and returned her gaze to the cave.

With the absence of engine noise, she studied the rock formation once more. This time, the gaping rock cluster remained still, as rocks should. With a sigh, she chalked up the oddity to her recent lack of sleep.

Since his return from isolated training in space, Vegeta had been a terrible guest. Not only did he manage to irritate the rest of the fighters with his late arrival at the android battle, his callous disregard for her own life and his infant child was almost too much for her friends to reconcile. After Cell's defeat, Bulma convinced Goku to leave Vegeta to her. Unfortunately the prince was infuriatingly detached from her and his own son, and never offered a moment's help, much less interest in the child. Still, she was convinced he would eventually come around with the help of her charms and genius ideas. After all, that's how she had won time with him in the first place.

Yet three months later, Vegeta managed to speak less to her now than before Trunks was born while Bulma averaged three hours of sleep per night. He ate food at the house at odd hours, stayed in his own room at night, never visited Trunks, and seemed to be avoiding her. If Trunks weren't such a cutey, and if her mom and dad hadn't been so thrilled to help out with their first grandchild, Bulma was fairly certain she would have taken Goku's nuclear option and let her best friend knock some sense into her dismissive lover.

But then, he issued this _invitation_. Months of silence, months of dissatisfaction, months of loneliness, and then a two sentence instruction to meet him on the other side of the planet, at night, on the last night of the month. If the request had come from anyone else, Bulma was pretty sure this might have been some kind of Halloween prank. But this was Vegeta. Prince Alien, Eternal House Guest and Earth Culture Brick Wall. Not once since he had moved in, then back in, had he shown any interest in their major holidays or social obligations.

She spent the two hour flight out to the largest desert on the Southern Continent in frustrated contemplation. Not a few times did she burst out into an imaginary argument alone in the cabin, filled with hellfire and venom for his aloofness. Each time, she bit her cheek in annoyance and tried to calm down. She figured their meeting would last a few minutes, expected to hear yet another reason why he needed to be away from her and his child, and then she'd be back home before midnight. Before she left, her parents gushed that they would be more than delighted to watch over Trunks for up to a week if they would let her, suggesting a tour of the country's best zoos. A quick hug for dad and a peck on mom's cheek, and she promised she would be back in time to tuck in Trunks after his second dinner.

Bulma stepped out of the cabin and walked around to the front of the rounded craft, leather ankle boots tapping against the smooth ground of the landing outcrop. With a huff she blew her bangs out of her eyes. She straightened the short gray velvet dress along the top of her thighs then settled both fists on her hips. The air here was temperate but the onset of fall had brought the barest chill into the air. She was thankful for the cropped cardigan over her shoulders.

Glancing up at the stars, she took a slower breath this time. A streak of the Milky Way loomed across more than half the night sky. Bulma surveyed the desolate area from the rocky outcrop to the dark horizon. An almost endless desert shimmered from the unclouded night sky. The sand took on an unearthly quality. In her mind, Bulma knew the Southern desert was dark gold, but below the raw magnificence of the spiral arm of the galaxy and a heavy full moon, the granules slowly drifted more like a frozen lake of silver. An odd, low throbbing sensation passed through the muscles of her bare legs and brought her attention back to the cave.

The entrance could probably fit a small dinosaur, but it was thankfully free of any obvious carcasses. Bulma walked to the cave and placed her hand on the rounded edges. The stone was unsurprisingly cool, but the smooth appearance felt like sandpaper beneath her palm. When she pulled her hand away, she winced. A long, shallow cut had sliced through from her ring finger to the base of her thumb. With furrowed brows, she looked at the rock face again. What had she cut her hand on? The entire surface looked smooth.

Irritated, Bulma ran her tongue across her scratched palm, absently licking away a few droplets of blood, and continued past the threshold. She scanned the interior, noting the same incongruent appearance continued into the tunnel. Rounded edges neither carved nor natural. While machines and physics were her forte, through her younger adventures, Bulma had picked up a passing interest in geology. Not willing to touch the rocks again, she walked closely along the relatively flat path that seemed worn across the ground and considered the cave's composition.

The path itself meandered like a lazy snake until it had curved enough for the entrance to disappear. In the back of Bulma's mind, she thought about needing something. A tool of some kind. An object most people would bring into a cave, especially at night. She flexed her scratched hand, brushing off the minor pain that pooled within her palm.

Unlike the dark gold sands of the desert outside the cave, the rocks here appeared light gray on the surface, with short streaks of a black mineral running perpendicular to the ground. She kept walking, but two thoughts screamed at her to stop. Right now.

_Where is your flashlight and why are the rocks sideways?_ _Stop! Stop moving!_

As if in a trance, her legs continued to carry her along the path, feeling the ground slope downward taking her deeper underground. Stratification in rocks belied vast moments of geological time, when various elements and sediments coated massive areas of the planet during its formation billions of years ago. But that stratification occurred as a result of material blanketing huge areas of land. It wasn't possible it could form in stripes like this. An earthquake, or human interference could have altered the direction of the rocks, but there was no indication of either in this cave. Something was very wrong with this place. As she continued further into the cave, the tunnel widened with the top beginning to disappear into uncomfortable darkness.

Bulma swallowed and felt her ears pop. She had only been walking for a few moments but she must have descended several meters if the air pressure had changed enough to cause that reaction. With increasing frustration, she tried concentrating on her legs, focusing on the idea of stopping, of standing still, of not progressing further into the darkening cavern. Instead, her hands flexed into fists, a few smears of blood getting onto the fingers of her injured hand and her body continued forward.

The path rounded past several enormous boulders that seemed to flow out of the walls like ice that had melted, frozen, and melted again. She could no longer see the top of the cavern, and even the walls had faded into shadow. It should have been pitch dark, but the path had taken on an unnatural blue glow. She could still see the stratification in the rocks, still recognize that the rocks were sideways, and still feel her feet taking her deeper into the planet.

Panic ripped through Bulma's mind and she bent at the waist as if to tuck away from whatever was compelling her to keep moving. In response, her body tumbled forward onto the path, head first, followed by the light crunch of her shoulder as her body rolled over itself several times. She collided with another massive boulder and finally came to a stop. Groaning, she brushed the palm of her uninjured hand against her forehead and found this one covered with blood as well.

_Lovely. A slice on my forehead. Why am I here again?! _

Her throat swallowed down another hellfire rant as she took in her surroundings. She could no longer see the any edges of the cavern, and even the path she had traveled seemed to disappear into a heavy darkness. The rocks around her swirled in ever-thinning, upward spirals trapped in the stillness of their weight. The pale blue glow which had accompanied her descent now made way for a lavender that shifted slowly between a reddish-black and an infrequent streaks of peach. As the colors undulated across the odd formations, Bulma's head rolled forward once, twice. Her eyes shut and she passed out, crumpling into the ground.

–

Bulma groaned and shifted her body. She blinked still closed eyes, pressing down the dizziness that lingered in the back of her brain. She remembered the cave, but didn't remember leaving. Her shoulder throbbed, and a low vibration passed through her muscles, compelling her to sit up. With a shift in her hips, she righted her spine, rubbed her face with her hands and finally opened her eyes. Both hands still had undried blood.

_I guess I wasn't out for too .._

Where there should have been a shadow on the backs of her hands, instead, her skin appeared almost iridescent, bathed in a slow, pulsing yellow light. Her eyes followed the illumination into the center of the cavern and her heart stopped.

Not two meters away from her, Vegeta sat on a smaller boulder, feet planted on the ground, elbows on his knees with his arms resting loosely between his legs. His back was slumped forward, so that his black mane tipped toward her ever so slightly. But his eyes, bright and unearthly green, were pinned on Bulma.

“You're bleeding.” Vegeta made no motion toward her but passed his gaze down her body. The incongruity of green eyes and black hair along with his uncanny stillness sent an immediate ripple from Bulma's stomach into her deepest core. She swallowed a breath, but found she couldn't quite put words together. Scrunching her brows together, she mouthed the words she wanted to say, but language felt odd in her mouth. No sound, because the shapes of the words seemed off to her. An arrow of panic shot through her stomach.

Vegeta watched her without comment, without much of a concerned expression, without movement. His eyes were sharp and steady, but his body, decked out in his usual training suit, had a softness in its pose.

“This place,” he began. Bulma bit the inside of her cheek, unable to panic, to speak, to move, or even to tear away her gaze from the half-transformed Saiyan in front of her. “It … it changes things.”

As he spoke, Bulma felt the fear inside her settle lower and lower in her body. His voice was a warm wind in this empty cavern, low and dark. Around her, the rocks had stopped shifting colors and held with a steady golden glow, likely from Vegeta's energy. Bulma wrapped her hands against her arms. Not cold, but still uncertain of the situation.

“Years ago, I came out to this desert to train. I guess the gravity chamber was broken again.” He paused and brought his eyes back up to hers. “It was before we rutted for the last time, before I left to train off world. Before I ascended.”

Bulma couldn't tell if the heat in her cheeks was anger reminded by his on-going absenteeism or lust from the memory of that night.

“You were incredible.”

Bulma bit her lip. Lust, definitely lust.

“I have relived that night in my head so many times.”

_So did I._

“Your body, your scent, your dress pooling on the floor of my room.”

_Your heat, your hardness, your strength flooding over me._

“The way I plunged into you. Gods Bulma. You were so ready and you wanted so much of me.” Vegeta leaned back with a long sigh, directing his gaze to the impossibly high ceiling. The energy around him pulsed slightly and Bulma studied the line of his throat. She watched his Adam's apple bounce with a swallow as he shut his eyes.

“I need you to know. I'm … I'm just so fucked up. What my life has …” He trailed off, chasing away the self-flagellating thoughts. He dropped his head back down and pinned green eyes on her. His energy thrummed within the cavern, but around both of them, stillness reigned. “I need you to know, to understand...”

Bulma tilted her head slightly, watching him with rapt curiosity. Vegeta was never this open in his conversations. Sure, they would argue, tease, or demand. But _this_ was a first. Bulma had given up talking by now. Like he said, the cave had changed them both. Watching him, she could make a guess what had happened to him. His vitriol, his sharp edges, his defenses were practically non-existent. As for her, she was simply quiet. She was simply listening. And thank Kami, because he was finally talking. His words were the treat she had been waiting for since he left her pregnant and alone. For possibly the first time in her life, she was happy to be speechless.

“Bulma, you wanted so much. I gave you everything that night … because I wanted it too.” A rush of deep teal passed across his green eyes. He pushed himself off the rock, landing on his knees a meter in front of her.

Bulma dropped her hands into her lap because she found she did not have the strength to reach out to him. The stillness of the cavern pressed on her body. Vegeta mirrored her, his arms hanging loose, like a marionette whose strings had been cut.

“You were not a convenience. Not something to break the routine of my days. Not just a quick rut. You were everything I had ever searched galaxies to gain.”

Kneeling before her, he sat back on his haunches and managed to grip his gloved hands into loose fists. The tips of his fingers didn't quite reach his palms, but she could see his muscles straining under the blue suit. She stared at Vegeta, almost slumped before her, prostrate on his knees, his eyes aglow with unfathomable power.

“And I could not be more proud to be the father of your child.”

Bulma wondered if something in the cave was changing her again, because everything seemed glossy. When she finally blinked, she felt heavy tears stream down her cheeks and land on the back of her hands.

Maybe she would let her parents take Trunks on that trip after all.

**Author's Note:**

> And then he licked the tears off her hands, ran his tongue across the still wet blood, kissed her like a madman, took her from the cave, and left the costumes of their other selves behind. Smut ensues! 
> 
> Halloween has candy, and pranks, and decorations, but it also has weird, and strange, and the chance to be something else for a while. The world of Dragonball is filled with all kinds of strangeness and magic, so I thought I'd add a place for Vegeta to reconcile his awful behavior from his departure to the end of the Cell Games. I know this didn't have adorable kids in costumes, and delicious candy, and smutty outfits, but, I hope this little slice of unsettling location offered enough of a trick, and Vegeta's confession made up for the treat.
> 
> Thank you to [Rouge_1102](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rogue_1102/pseuds/rogue_1102) for pointing me to the lovely [MahoganyDoodles](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MahoganyDoodles/pseuds/MahoganyDoodles) to get the lowdown on this very fun [Halloween inspired event](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/Halloweenie). I didn't realize this was happening until two days ago and MahoganyDoodles was kind enough to let me fill in a slot at the last minute. So, yes, this was written in about 24 hours. I hope the editing isn't too ghastly!


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